Book Forum on Omer Bartov's Israel: What Went Wrong?
Abstract
This book forum discusses Omer Bartov’s latest book on the roots of contemporary Israeli politics. In particular, it examines Zionism and its transformation—from what Bartov presents as an initially emancipatory ideology for some of its adherents into the ethnonationalist state ideology that, in his account, underpins Israel’s genocidal policies today. The forum features three critical responses to the book, by Jakub Záhora, Pavel Barša, and Hanna Pfeifer, followed by a response from Bartov. Unlike many critical accounts of Israel, Israel: What Went Wrong? is not written from an explicitly anti-Zionist position. Bartov approaches contemporary Israeli politics against the backdrop of his own personal trajectory: he once believed in the promise of Zionism and served as an IDF soldier, but has since come to argue that Israel has taken a fundamentally misguided direction and is now pursuing a genocidal path. The three responses and Bartov’s reply extend this polemical debate over Zionism and the ongoing Israeli military operation in Gaza, bringing together perspectives shaped by different intellectual traditions and regional contexts, including Central and Central-Eastern Europe. The forum addresses several interconnected questions: the emancipatory potential of Zionism; the question of genocidal intent in Israel’s conduct in Gaza; the relationship between Israel’s lack of a formal constitution and its democratic order; and the epistemic and scholarly value of personal experience and perspective. Taken together, the contributions critically examine both the historical trajectory of Zionism and the conceptual and political tensions underlying contemporary debates about Israel.
Keywords
Israel, Zionism, ethnonationalism, Gaza, genocide, ethnic cleansing
Author Biography
Omer Bartov
Omer Bartov is an Israeli-American scholar and Dean’s Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University. He has written widely on war crimes, interethnic relations, and genocide. His recent books, published in multiple languages, include Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz (2018), which won the National Jewish Book Award; Genocide, the Holocaust and Israel-Palestine: First-Person History in Times of Crisis (2023), named a Choice 2024 Outstanding Academic Title; and Israel: What Went Wrong? (2026). Bartov’s essays and commentaries have been widely featured in national and international magazines and media outlets.
Pavel Barša
Pavel Barša is a professor in the Department of Political Science at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University, and a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences. He has written extensively on political theory, feminism, multiculturalism, international relations theory, and nationalism. His recent books include Mezi Davidovou a rudou hvězdou: Židovské odpovědi na krizi liberální emancipace (Between the Star of David and the Red Star: Jewish Responses to the Crisis of Liberal Emancipation, 2023), Dekadence a obrození (Decadence and Revival, 2024) and Co je a co není antisemitismus (What Is and Is Not Antisemitism, Praha: Alarm, forthcoming).
Hanna Pfeifer
Hanna Pfeifer is head of the research area “Societal Peace and Internal Security” at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg. Her research focuses on domestic and international dynamics of order and violence. She works at the intersection of political science research on violence/conflict, international relations, and the area studies of West Asia and North Africa (WANA). Her work has been published in, among others, Cooperation and Conflict, Foreign Policy Analysis, Civil Wars, and Small Wars and Insurgencies. She is the author of Islamists and the Global Order. Between Resistance and Recognition (2024, Edinburgh UP).
Jakub Záhora
Jakub Zahora is a researcher and lecturer at the School of International Relations and Media Studies at University of New York in Prague (UNYP). Previously, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology and held visiting fellowships at Hebrew University, Copenhagen University and New York University. Zahora's cover research interests critical approaches to international politics, political ethnography, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.